Ghost Box Read online

  One of my favorite investigations that day had to be at the McInteer Mansion. It was an extraordinarily large house that looked like something you would see in the movie Psycho, the finest type of Victorian building you could possibly imagine. I clearly remember how I felt as I stepped in the back door. I knew immediately that several of the former tenants were still there. Every room held some sort of evidence, whether it was EVPs or pictures of orbs and shadows. The current owner told us the macabre story of the elderly woman who died in her rocking chair inside the house during the summer. Apparently she had dozens of cats. When she died, none of the windows in the house were open and there was no air conditioning. The cats, unable to escape the house and with no food or water, soon turned their attention to the decaying corpse sitting in the corner of the mansion. Yes, they actually ate their former owner and it was several weeks before the townspeople could figure out where the horrific stench was coming from. When they finally realized what had happened, the smell was so bad that it had permeated all of the carpet and even the walls inside the home. Not only did all of the carpet have to be removed and replaced, but all of the floorboards in the house had to be covered in plastic as the stench had penetrated the wood. At this point I was absolutely sure the elderly woman’s spirit was still inside the house looking for a way out, so before we left I made sure to address her by name and tell her that it was okay to move to the light.

  We had a quick dinner that night, but all of our attention was focused on the highlight of our visit: our investigation of the Sallie House. Joining us was a newspaper reporter from the town as well as a cameraman from a local Topeka television station. The Travel and Tourism Bureau had released a press release about us coming to town and doing an investigation of the Sallie House and the media didn’t want to miss out on the chance to grab a piece of evidence or at least a good story. Our guide told us that it was going to be a cold night, as the Sallie House was under renovation and there was no carpet or heat inside the house. When I pressed our guide as to what happened in the home, the only information I could drag out of him was that the last tenant, a woman, practiced some kind of dark magic. She hadn’t paid her rent for several months and when the owner of the house pushed to have her removed from the property, he was horrified to find that the house was in complete and utter disrepair. He reported that all of the carpets had been covered in fecal matter and that the woman had made a makeshift satanic altar in the basement, including an inverted pentagram with animal sacrifice remains still sitting on and around it. Our guide ended his statement with a nervous laugh as he looked toward the floor. I looked at my partner and our intern with concern.

  When we finally arrived at the house, I was a little stunned. I didn’t realize that it was directly across the street from the bed and breakfast where we were staying. Though it was fairly cold outside, there were several townspeople milling around, obviously interested in our investigation. We pulled up to the front and got out. When I looked up at the small structure, my stomach turned. It was a modest white home—but the second story window immediately drew my attention. The three of us didn’t speak as we pulled equipment out of the vehicle. I internally struggled between what I was experiencing on a psychic level and my perceptions of everything I’d seen on television. It was much more difficult than I could have possibly imagined. It was apparent to me that our guide wanted to get this portion of our visit over with as quickly as possible. Before we had taken all of our equipment out of the car, he had already made his way up the path and onto the porch and was attempting to open the door.

  Equipment in hand, we made our way toward the house to meet up with our guide, the newspaper reporter, and the cameraman. Our guide was fighting the lock on the door, furiously jiggling the keys. Finally, as if someone had unlocked the door from the other side, he pushed the door open. He nervously walked through the front door and began fumbling for light switches. When several lights flicked on, I could see there was a staircase directly in front of us, and a room to the right. We all walked in hesitantly and I remember the piercing energy and bizarre smell of the house. While it was cold outside, it felt like something was causing it to be even more frigid within the house. My legs felt weak upon entering and I experienced a buzzing inside my head. I was extremely confused by the energy, as it was nothing I had ever felt before.

  When I walked into the room on the right, I felt sadness surrounding me. Looking around at the other people who were there, I believe they felt it too, whether they acknowledged it or not. We had to be careful where we walked and set things down, since there was no carpet but there were exposed carpet tacks everywhere. Once our equipment was settled, we began pulling out as many handheld tools as possible. During all of this, I was drawn upstairs by something or someone. As I began to ascend the stairs, I immediately noted the feeling of sinking into the floor, as if the wood were quicksand.

  When we reached the landing, two rooms stood out to me. In front of me, just off to my left, was a room that emanated a strange combination of energies. As the cameraman filmed and the reporter jotted down notes, our guide told me, “This was the nursery. I guess quite a bit of activity happened in here.” I cautiously entered the room and was amazed by the contradictory energy of something extremely strong and evil and something shy and innocent. I began to snap pictures inside the room and caught several spirit orbs on my digital camera. I turned to show my results to my partner, our intern, and everyone else in the room. Everyone gathered around the small viewfinder to see the results. My partner was taking pictures and videotaping and getting similar evidence.

  After spending a few minutes in that room, we turned our attention to the second room that had drawn me in. As I took my first step in, our guide said, “This was the doctor’s bedroom and it’s also apparently where the little girl died.” Before he had even spoken the words, I already knew exactly where I was. Quick flash images from long ago filled my mind. I could still sense the fear, anger, and hostility that were imprinted in that room. For some reason I was drawn to the dressing closet and this is where we decided to do our first EVP session. We gathered in a circle and started to ask questions into the open air. My partner and I were on the same page on how to attempt to communicate with this little girl. We both spoke to her as you would speak to any seven-year-old child. We asked her if she was there, if she would talk to us, if she was scared, and if she needed our help. We were shocked when we actually heard a few audible voices and whispers inside the closet while we did the session.

  After we wrapped up the recording, we went downstairs to investigate a bit more. When we got back to the first level, we went to the kitchen for the first time. While the rest of the house was painted white, the kitchen had one dark red accent wall that drew my attention, though at the time I couldn’t figure out why. I noticed the door to the basement was open. We flipped on the light and went down to the narrow basement space. It was partially finished with concrete, though a good section of it was still dirt. It looked as if someone had knocked out a portion of a false wall made of brick. The remnants of the black-magic pentagram were still on the floor and, needless to say, it made me extremely uncomfortable to be anywhere in the vicinity of it. Our companions on this investigation were becoming antsy as they started to feel an unnatural coldness settle over the room. We were all capturing anomalous images and sounds on our equipment. We returned to the first floor to discuss what we would do next. Our guide asked, “Okay, are you ready to get out of here?” He’d had more than enough paranormal exploration for one day.

  I was ready to review our evidence to see if we could prove or disprove the Sallie story when something spoke to me on a psychic level. I can’t say I consciously meant for the words to come out, but they did. I said, “Let’s get out of here. There’s obviously nothing going on inside this house. It was all a hoax.” My business partner looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. I gave him a knowing wink and he nodded and said, “Yeah, I agree. Th
is place is a total joke.” We then motioned to everyone to leave the house. Our guide, completely confused by what was going on, was just happy we were leaving. Upon exiting the house, we saw that several more townspeople had gathered on the other side of the street waiting for something to happen. Our team marched across the street back to the Glick Mansion and met inside the parlor. We quickly pulled out laptops in an attempt to review what we obtained. As the downloads began, I told everyone in the room, “We’re going back in there.” Everyone but my partner, who immediately understood my reasoning, looked at each other with confusion.

  The newspaper reporter asked, “What do you mean? Back to the Sallie House?”

  I said, “Yes. There were several spirits hiding that didn’t want us there.” While I was discussing my impressions of what was going on inside the house, my partner had downloaded the audio and played back several intriguing voices, including that of a little girl who was obviously reaching out to us. At this point, the newspaper reporter had experienced enough and decided to leave. We thanked her for coming and gathered the remaining part of our team, which included our reluctant tour guide and our very brave cameraman.

  My plan was simple. Though I don’t believe in antagonizing a spirit in most cases, I knew we needed to burst into the location to draw out the negativity that was present. We gathered up a few handheld investigation tools, including still cameras, video cameras, EMF meters, and a white noise machine. The five of us quickly jogged across the street and opened the door as fast as possible. We burst into the house, yelling and screaming, in an attempt to shock the negative spirits that I believed were hiding. We flashed cameras, turned on noisy meters and white noise machines, and asked questions to the open air. Everyone there felt immediate tension inside the small house. I could clearly see that our intern was very uncomfortable with what we were doing and our tour guide was caught somewhere between feeling silly about what he was doing and scared of what might happen. I was drawn to the kitchen again and the odd red wall. I pulled out my Trifield Natural EMF meter and began scanning that area. The readings were off the chart, and without any mundane explanation, I began to consider the possibility of that area being a vortex. As I got readings, my partner snapped pictures and recorded video. He said he was capturing quite a bit of energy. I said, “I think this might be a vortex.”

  At that moment, I felt excruciating pain at the top of my head, as if someone had taken a nail and hammered it into the top of my skull. I dropped the meter and hunched over in pain, grabbing the top of my head. My partner, shocked, said, “What’s wrong?” I told him what I experienced and he began to pull my hair apart to see if there was anything there. The cameraman was filming the entire time. In the spot where it felt like a nail had been pounded into my skull, a large red welt was beginning to form. I was stunned and dizzy and there was consensus in the room that it was time we left.

  I said, “No. We need to find out why she’s doing this.” While everyone was recording, I pulled out my voice recorder and began to pose questions to the little girl’s spirit. I said, “Sallie, why would you do this to me?” I tried to leave time for her to reply, but in my confused state, I was asking rapid-fire questions. A minute or two into my interrogation of this poor little girl’s spirit, something came to me on a psychic level. At that point I said, “Wait a minute, this isn’t Sallie at all. You’re the doctor! You’re the one who’s doing this. Why would you do this? Who are you trying to protect?”

  The instant I called out to the doctor, one of the most frightening things that has ever happened to me occurred. It felt as if someone had taken a hot clothes iron and stuck it to the side of my face. I could feel the burn start at the top of my left earlobe and go all the way down my neck to my shoulder. The cameraman gasped—he could see the heat coming off the side of my face. This was the first time I was ever attacked by a spirit. I immediately realized there was no way to fight something that wasn’t on our dimensional level. I couldn’t hit it; I couldn’t run away. I just had to wait for it to stop.

  I yelled into the room, “Why are you doing this?” The response was immediate and hostile—it felt like something reached up through the floorboards into my legs and pulled all of the energy out of my body. As I began to fall to the ground, my partner grabbed me and pulled me toward the door. Everyone present understood the severity of the situation and what they were witnessing and quickly attempted to get out of the house. In recalling the situation afterward, it was like experiencing missing time, with disjointed scenes flashing before my eyes. I remember getting out of the house and cold air stinging my skin. I remember all of the lights being turned off in the house and the door being slammed and locked. I remember concerned townspeople asking what happened and my partner rushing past them. I also remember looking back into the dark house that suddenly looked as if someone had turned a massive television on inside. I saw flashing white lights in the windows of the Sallie House and I knew nothing natural was causing it.

  When they finally got me back inside the Glick Mansion, the innkeepers told me I needed to get to a doctor, as they could clearly see the burn on the side of my face. I was in shock and only wanted to recount everything that happened to me with the team. The proprietor handed me a glass of aged whiskey and told me to drink it. I took a few sips before realizing I needed to sleep. The minute my head hit the pillow, I was out. When I woke in the morning I wondered if the entire experience had all been a dream. When I got up and started to get ready for the day, I looked at my face in the mirror and saw the burn had all but disappeared. I then realized that the spirit had used my own energy to create the burn. I knew then that this would not be my last visit to the Sallie House.

  Upon returning home from the Sallie House the first time, I began to feel as if I hadn’t left all the house’s negative energy in Atchison. My wife mentioned she was seeing things out of the corner of her eye. I didn’t want to cause panic so I told her that I believed the experience had left both of us shaken, though I felt there might possibly have been something attached to one or both of us.

  Sounds of knocking from the ceiling, walls, and rooms became an everyday occurrence. One night when I was alone, I decided to pull out my digital camera to take some pictures around the house just to see if there was anything there. To my astonishment, orbs filled every room in our house and the majority seemed to be focused in our family room. I felt it was important to share this information with my wife, so I ended up showing her the pictures. This did absolutely nothing to calm the situation.

  It wasn’t until a few days later that my wife, daughter, and I were watching TV in the family room when we heard one of the most frightening sounds I have ever heard. My daughter and I were on a couch that sat up against the wall and my wife was sitting in a chair across the room. I noticed my young daughter becoming emotional and suddenly scared. The hair stood up on my arms and a knot formed in my stomach. It felt as though something massive was hovering over our backs. Instinctively I looked over my shoulder and grabbed my daughter to hold her close. At that moment, we all heard the unmistakeable sound of dogs viciously fighting emanating from the wall behind us. I pulled my daughter from the couch and moved her across the room. All three of us clearly heard the terrifying dogfight racket and stared at one another in disbelief.

  Once I snapped out of it, I threw open the sliding glass door and ran through the yard and around the house to see what was causing the sound. When I reached the far side of the house, there was absolutely nothing there. I placed my hands on the seven-foot fence and pulled myself up to look over the top to see if there was anything in the neighbor’s yard. Once again there was nothing.

  I stood there for several minutes contemplating what to do next and tried to pull myself together before reporting the news to my family. My daughter, being extraordinarily savvy when it comes to the paranormal, immediately knew that something was drastically wrong. We made a decision as a family to do a clearing i
n the house. The next night when I was alone in the house, I decided to burn sage and fill the house with white light and positive energy. Once the ritual was complete we never heard from that particular entity again.

  Sallie House—2nd and 3rd Investigations

  From my very first investigation at the Sallie House, I knew this property wasn’t going to be like any other property or type of investigation I had been involved with before. When my partner from Ghost Hunter magazine and I planned our second investigation of the Sallie House property, we decided we wanted to get to know some of the townspeople in the hope they might be able to give us insight into the house and hauntings.

  While we did conduct investigations inside the property on the second visit, the majority of evidence came together through research at the library. We were able to take information gathered during electronic voice phenomena sessions and use it to compare with physical records. To our astonishment, almost everything added up. When we finally wrapped up that investigation, the former tenant provided us with some detailed accounts to take with us and help us prepare for our third investigation.

  Nearly six months passed before I returned to the Sallie House for the third investigation. That time, I made the decision to bring my mother with me, hoping she would experience the energy and be able to give us insight into the haunting with her psychic ability. It didn’t hurt that she was also a great researcher—I knew this would be a benefit. Our third visit to Atchison was during the winter and the owner of the property had done some work to make it a little bit more livable. We stayed across the street at the Glick Mansion with the innkeepers who had now become friends. We spent a full day investigating the Sallie House while collecting some amazing evidence. Several of the townspeople, including staff at the library, met with us to relate stories they had heard about the house through the years. The library staff was also able to research and dig up some new information that helped us in the investigation.